April 15, 2013

In the Long Run We’re All Dead. In the Medium Run, We Have Things to Worry About.

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Perhaps today I will link only to people named Matthew. Here is Matt Yglesias on possible fears about the future:

I understand why people worry about technological unemployment. And I understand why people worry about rising entitlement spending burdens. What I don’t understand is why people worry about them both simultaneously. In the technological unemployment world, we’ll be able to give everyone a 2013 level of consumption goods with a radically diminished workforce, raising the question of what everyone is going to actually do.

….The other worry is the opposite of this one. It’s that in the future a very large share of our population will be elderly nonworkers and a very large share of our workforce will be dedicated to taking care of elderly nonworkers (“skyrocketing health care costs”), and that consequently younger people’s living standards will diminish or stagnate.

Either of those things could happen, but they can’t both happen.

Well, now, I’m not so sure about that. The question is: who will benefit from technological unemployment? Unless public policy changes fairly radically, the answer is: the owners of technology. In other words, the rich.

If technology really does keep improving and putting humans out of work, this means the rich will get ever richer. And in theory, we can tax away that wealth to take care of our entitlement problems. In theory. But I don’t think it’s entirely irrational to be worried that this might not be as easy as it sounds. As you may have noticed, rich people fight like crazed weasels to prevent their wealth from being taxed away. Do we think their political power is somehow going to decline as they become richer and richer?

This cycle can’t go on forever. Eventually the masses will rebel, or the rich will actually get less rich because nobody has any money to keep the economy going. (Robots have no need for houses or fast food restaurants.) Or something. But “eventually” could be a ways away. In the medium-term future, both technological unemployment and rising entitlement burdens could indeed both be serious problems simultaneously.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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